


burning up like a wildfire

by parcequelle



Category: Ocean's 8 (2018)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-09
Updated: 2018-06-09
Packaged: 2019-05-19 23:53:54
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,538
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14883666
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/parcequelle/pseuds/parcequelle
Summary: If she didn’t know better, she’d think Lou was being sentimental. Set early in the movie.





	burning up like a wildfire

**Author's Note:**

> A Russian translation of this work is now available [here](https://ficbook.net/readfic/7279145) thanks to [Nico09200](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nico092000/pseuds/Nico092000)!

‘What?’ Debbie asks, when Lou just keeps looking at her. ‘Do I have pad Thai on my face?’

‘Now that you mention it,’ Lou says. She smirks as she reaches out, wipes a drop of sauce from the corner of Debbie’s lip, lingers a second. If she didn’t know better, she’d think Lou was being sentimental.

Her quip to that effect falls flat before she can speak it, and instead, Debbie hears herself say, ‘So, how much did you miss me?’

Lou gives her that patented look, condescension tied up in exasperation tied up in fondness, and says, ‘About 150 million dollars’ worth.’

‘I’ll take it,’ Debbie says. Lou is still looking at her, chopsticks poised in mid-air, so Debbie lets herself look back. It’s strange, remembering the fact that she’s not being watched, at least not here. Not anymore. ‘You look good,’ she tells her.

Lou raises an eyebrow and finally puts her food into her mouth, chews and swallows. ‘I always look good. _You_ look good.’ She pauses before she adds, ‘You look better than I… thought.’ She’d wanted to say “feared”, Debbie thinks. ‘Were you working out? Inside?’

Debbie nods. ‘Helps me think. Though it turns out I’m at my most mentally productive when I’m alone and staring at four white walls.’

‘Aww, baby’s an introvert.’

‘Well,’ Debbie says, leaning back in her chair, ‘most geniuses are.’

‘I know,’ Lou says. ‘I’m one too.’

She digests that. ‘You want to be alone right now?’

Lou waves a dismissive hand and moves to clear their dishes. ‘Alone with you doesn’t count.’

She says it flippantly, but it still makes Debbie smile. She figures she’s allowed a bit of softness after the last five years. ‘Thanks for the birthday cards, by the way. Your German’s abysmal.’

‘You’re welcome.’ Lou has walked across the room to dump the takeout cartons in the trash, and she leans back, hands wrapped around the lip of the counter. Her bangles clink as she drums her fingers; Debbie realises she’s been watching those fingers, and glances up to Lou’s knowing smile. ‘How else could I show you I care?’

Debbie raises an eyebrow.

‘Oh,’ Lou says, ‘are we not talking about it?’

Debbie crosses one leg over the other and watches Lou’s eyes flick down to the shift of her calves. ‘Talking about what?’

Lou tilts her head, considering, and then says, ‘The sexual tension,’ and Debbie snorts.

‘We’ve always done a pretty good job of not talking about it before, haven’t we?’

‘You weren’t always in prison.’

‘Touché,’ Debbie says. She thinks about it, weighs practicality and desire. ‘This is a big job, Lou. We can’t afford distractions.’

‘You’re absolutely right.’ Lou is walking – sauntering – over, those long, long legs in high, high heels as mouth-watering as they ever have been. God, she loves Lou in a suit. Her eyes follow the sway of Lou’s hips as she comes to a stop beside her, perched on the table; an angle calculated for optimal temptation, Debbie can tell. She wants to slide her fingers below the waistband of Lou’s pants and dig her nails into Lou’s hipbone. She wants to follow her fingers with tongue and teeth. ‘That’s why it would be responsible of us to dissipate the tension before we get started. Don’t you agree?’

Debbie studies her, and Lou studies her back. She’s confident enough in her poker face, experienced enough with using it that it doesn’t faze her; this particular negotiation has been a long time coming, after all. She already knows what she’s going to say – if prison has taught her anything, it’s that there’s a time for action, and now is that time – but there is pleasure in the way they gaze at one another, tension building, taut and thrilling.

She could say no, is the thing. She could pass it off and say goodnight and nothing would change. No bruised feelings, no injured looks, no angst-ridden pining – nothing that would jeopardise the job or their friendship. They’ve been through too much for sex to pose any danger to what they are.

That’s one reason she says yes.

The other reason is that Lou, sitting there in fitted trousers with her eyebrow cocked and her too-bright eyes belying her indifference, is the hottest fucking sight she’s seen in five years. And it’s been a long, (mostly) celibate five years.

Debbie rises from the chair – a smooth motion she credits to her prison workouts – and moves to stand between Lou’s spread knees. Lou’s legs dangle; dark material pulls deliciously over her thighs. Debbie imagines heat, or maybe feels it, and Lou smiles a slow-curling promise.

‘I agree,’ Debbie says. Her hands land on those thighs, and she feels the jump of muscle beneath her trailing fingers. ‘I agree entirely.’

‘Glad that’s settled,’ Lou says, and then she hooks one long finger into the collar of Debbie’s shirt and pulls her in, licks at her lip once, twice, before they fall into a breath that is also a kiss. It’s shallow, at first; Debbie plots and teases and Lou indulges her, and it doesn’t surprise her that they should function together in this as they do in everything else. Danny used to joke that love was the con to end all cons, to end all conmen, but Debbie knows that love, if anything, is the trust that you have in your partner; the faith that they’ll stick around even after you get put away; the knowledge that you’ll clash but you’ll move past it and be stronger for it.

‘Why are you thinking so hard?’ Lou asks. She moves to attach herself to Debbie’s neck, and the trace of her tongue makes Debbie sigh and arch, and Debbie starts to walk her backwards in the hopeful general direction of the stairs.

‘Habit,’ Debbie says. ‘Not much else to do in the slammer.’

Lou stops. Just stops, lifts her head and peers at her in a way that makes Debbie frown.

‘What?’

‘Are you… you know. Okay?’ Lou gestures between them. ‘With this?’

She understands immediately what Lou is asking – what she is trying not to ask. ‘Of course I am,’ Debbie says. It comes out gentler than she means it to, but it’s worth it the moment Lou’s eyes soften. ‘You think your hand would still be there if I weren’t?’

Lou’s hand is up the back of her shirt, splayed on her spine, not touching her bra strap but a near thing. She takes a second to look as abashed as Lou ever can (not very) and nods. ‘Gotcha. Upstairs?’

‘ASAP,’ Debbie says. ‘Plenty of time for fucking in your kitchen, partner, but first I want to see what you’ve done with all my shit.’

‘Borrowed your fountain pens, slept in your pyjamas. Your tiny shoes were no use to me.’

‘Cute, Bigfoot, you make it sound like I’m the one with the freaky feet.’

Lou pats her cheek. When she says, ‘It’s all a matter of perception, darling,’ her accent folds over the words in a way that makes Debbie’s insides do a little dance. After all these years, she still isn’t immune. Not that she’ll ever tell Lou that. Her idea to create a distraction by tugging Lou and her giant feet up the stairs is an inspired one, and it works until Lou pushes her up against the wall outside the bedroom, rips her shirt open, and starts tonguing her way down Debbie’s quick-moving chest.

Debbie isn’t complaining. Much. ‘Come on, the bedroom’s right – shit, Lou – yes, yes, do it,’ she says, because Lou is glancing up at her, hands poised at her breasts, seeking permission. Once she has it, she tosses Debbie’s shirt to the ground and pulls down both bra cups, exposing her sensitive nipples to the air. Lou’s thumbs brush them and brush them again, and Lou kisses her in counterpoint to the touch. She strokes down Debbie’s sides, the right kind of pressure; her lips follow her fingers down Debbie’s neck, over her clavicle, down her chest, and she bends to take a nipple into her mouth when Debbie arches up in invitation.

‘Lou,’ she says, ‘Lou—’ and she tangles her fingers into Lou’s excellent hair (she’s probably been using Debbie’s straightener, too) and strokes down behind her ears, makes Lou gasp. Lou’s blond head at her chest, Lou’s sharp slender shoulders beneath her hand, Debbie is brightly, fiercely relieved that she’s free. The only thing better than good sex with a good partner is a good con, and this woman is both, is all, is a whole lot of other things as well. Lou’s fingers are starting on the clasp of her pants when Debbie tugs her up and says, ‘I’m not doing this in your hallway for the first time, come on,’ and she even takes it when Lou mocks her for being soft. The fact that she’s pushing Debbie down onto the bed and crawling over her as she does it goes a long way.

‘I didn’t think you were serious about the pyjamas,’ Debbie gasps, stripped efficiently down to underwear and hot skin. The pyjamas are tossed haphazardly over a nearby chair, but they’re there.

Lou pauses in the act of rolling up her shirtsleeves, of sliding a pillow under Debbie’s hips, to shrug. ‘I missed you,’ she says, a disarming moment of honesty that presses Debbie right in the ribs. ‘And I’m not going to rob a sleepwear store because that’s just sad.’

‘You could always buy pyjamas.’

They start laughing at the same time.

‘I was going to finger you,’ Lou says conversationally, ‘but look.’ She holds up her nails, newly manicured, and Debbie winces. ‘I hope you don’t mind if I lick you out instead.’

‘Jesus Christ, Lou,’ Debbie mutters. ‘No, I do not mind.’

‘Great,’ Lou says, and leans in, presses a kiss right over her underwear where the damp is leaking through. Debbie grips into the sheets and pulls in a long breath not to calm, but to savour; she’d always known this would happen, sometime, but it’s happening now and it’s filling the room, filling her.

She doesn’t know what Lou has been doing these last few years, but she might have been practicing. Her lips are attentive and persistent, pushing and yielding according to how Debbie moves, how loudly she cries out, what language she uses to curse. Lou’s tongue flicks and curls within her, around her, and her thumb on Debbie’s clit builds her higher and higher, stronger and stronger, until she crests and falls, one hand stroking Lou’s cheek, the other one pinching her own tingling nipple.

‘Oh, fuck,’ Debbie sighs, when words return to her. ‘Why haven’t we been doing this for years?’

‘We have,’ Lou says, grinning, as she slides up Debbie’s body, shedding clothes as she goes. ‘We’ve just been stealing shit instead.’ She kisses Debbie, Debbie’s taste on her tongue, and murmurs, ‘Stealing shit is orgasmic.’

Debbie thinks about the way it feels, how much she’s missed it – how that feeling is the one she’s most longed to chase, these last few years – and how Lou has always been with her, beside her, sharing the feeling. How Lou and that feeling are twined together like rope, inescapable and her very favourite thing. ‘Stealing shit is orgasmic,’ she confirms, and then she tosses Lou’s pants and shoes and belt and eight thousand necklaces and bangles across the room and says, ‘But that doesn’t mean I don’t still want to bang you.’

Lou’s response to that is to pull her bra off and fling it aside and there she is: gloriously confident, gloriously naked, the very same glint in her eye. Debbie climbs onto her and straddles her, still wet against her pelvis, and Lou groans something that sounds a lot like approval. 

‘Tell me what you want,’ Debbie says. She cups Lou’s breasts in her hands, tweaks her nipples between hungry fingers. ‘Tell me what you don’t want.’

‘How are your nails?’ Lou asks. Blunt and short, Debbie rakes them down her side, and Lou grins. ‘Touch me, you felon.’

Debbie loses a few minutes to kissing her, hot and indulgent, before she slides down, moulds herself against Lou’s side to continue the cartography of her body. Lou is deliciously responsive, more abandoned than Debbie had ever imagined; unembarrassed and unashamed, she revels in sex in a way that makes Debbie’s mouth go dry, makes her bend her head to catch Lou’s lips again, to taste the sound of her pleasure first-hand. Debbie’s fingers move slick and easy down and in, down into heat, fingers that tangle into coarse, damp hair and catch and make Lou groan. Lou parts her thighs and then shifts, curls a dextrous leg up and around Debbie’s hips and pushes down, takes her in deeper, and if Debbie’s mouth was dry before, it’s watering now at the feel of slick moisture and fire and a rougher spot her fingers seek and find. 

‘Deb, yes,’ she’s murmuring, one hand moving down to guide Debbie’s, adjusting the pressure on her clit. ‘Like that, like – _yes_ , I always… I always knew we’d do this and it would be…’ 

She doesn’t finish the sentence, but Debbie knows what she means, and she swells with sudden, awkward affection, glad that Lou’s too preoccupied to notice. Debbie is out of practice with this angle and her wrist is tired, but she can feel Lou building, winding tight, so she curls her arm around Lou’s waist and tugs her closer to relieve some of the strain on her forearm. She brushes Lou’s clit and feels her cry reverberate all down the length of her own body; brushes it again. She curls her fingers and keeps up a rhythm and then, inspired and tempted and desperate, she closes her mouth over Lou’s nipple and feels Lou coil and coil and then pulse, slick wet heat around her fingers, Lou gasping with her fringe in her eyes.

Lou has barely caught her breath when she pulls Debbie on top of her to kiss her, sweat to skin and mouths warm and compliant. Being naked with Lou, it turns out, is not all that different to being clothed with Lou; it’s still fun, it still fits, it still sings its way along her veins like an apt translation. They kiss, and Lou nibbles her neck, and Debbie finally learns what Lou’s tattoo tastes like (the rest of her skin, but it’s a decades-old curiosity satisfied).

When they’ve cleaned themselves up and conceded to put on pyjamas – Debbie’s – because it’s chilly, they lie in bed, and Lou says, ‘What now?’

‘Now we do the job,’ Debbie says. She is tracing aimless patterns on the smooth, exposed skin of Lou’s side, feeling the even shift of her breath.

‘And then what?’

‘Do another job, or not.’ She shrugs even though she’s lying down. ‘Enjoy not being in prison.’

Lou snorts.

‘And do this some more,’ Debbie says, a casual afterthought that isn’t. She glances over. ‘If you’re game.’

Lou smirks at her, kiss-smudged and haughty and naked and gorgeous and Debbie’s best friend in the world. ‘Deborah,’ she says, ‘I’m always game.’


End file.
